Our day started with a 1-hr flight from Beijing to Hohhot on a Friday morning. We got the earliest because it's the cheapest. The roundtrip ticket only cost around 740CNY which was a landslide choice compared to the 600++ overnight trip by train. Our tour guide SMSed me saying she's at the arrival area wearing a pink cap. She then took us to a "3 star" hotel; which to our opinion was more like a "no star" motel sae for the hot water in the shower.
We are to spend 3 days in Inner Mongolia but the tour we took will only start the following day, Saturday and Sunday, which means we had the whole day to explore the city by ourselves.
Using Inner Mongolia's 2007 map we got for free at the Hohhot Int'l Airport, we first went to the Five Pagoda by taxi. Flag down is at 6CNY so majority of our city tour, except for the trip to the airport, only had us shelling out 10CNY each time. The 5 Pagoda was right smack in the center of modern structures and was smaller inside but was impressive. (Pictures are the two on top and the one in the middle left)
Pressed for time, we took pictures then scurried to our next stop - Dazhao lamasery which is the largest temple and oldest building in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia being built at 1580. We didn't spend that much time inside as we have seen our share of temples and lamasery in Beijing (Yonghegong Lama Temple). So we just headed outside in search of a restaurant. One thing we
realized when travelling is that one should also research on decent places to eat and not just
research on which places to visit. This lesson was learned the hard way when we had to walk
several blocks before we were able to find the whole strip of restaurants.
Our last stop for our first day was at the Inner Mongolia Museum. It was frickin' huge! Just walking around different rooms with different dioramas and displays really killed our feet. I was nearly dragging myself back to our hotel. To prove how spent we were, we slept at 5pm until the next morning. Lol!
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It took us 2 hours to get to the grasslands. We had to squeeze ourselves in a van to join 6 more people joining the tour. It was well worth it because the scene that welcomed us was so vast and serene that you'll almost forget that you're in China. Locals in their native outfits welcomed us with drinks. We were told by our guide to accept it with our right hand and we were not obliged to drink everything.
We also realized how under dressed we were when it was still a couple of degrees below 10 a
nd the locals were staring at us since we were wearing "tokongs", shorts, and thin
jackets. Uh-oh..and we're supposed to stay overnight? Yay!
Activities like horse back riding and ATV were available to go around the different tourist spots in the grasslands. We decided to just walk around and take pictures. The yurts they were offering for us to stay have two kinds: one is the standard yurt where 5-6 people can sleep (doesn't include a WC so it was a deal breaker for me); the second one looked more like a hotel (with normal beds, TV, small coffee table, and WC) and one has to shell out 70CNY/pax.
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We were up early the next day and had the traditional Mongolia breakfast of boiled eggs, mantao, and porridge. We were all advised to stock up on food because our trip to the desert will take 5 hours - 2 hours to go back to the city proper then 3 more hours to go to the Kubuqi
desert.
We drove by a bridge that stands above the Yellow river. The rest of the trip wasn't that boring because of the scenes we were seeing outside. The picture above was a shot outside our van. Can you see those 3 round specks in the distance? It turned out to be a huge storage facility. Everything is big here in China.
We stopped at the starting point of the desert. We all rented sand shoes to help us trek in the sand and for our shoes to stay sand-free (almost). Rental of the shoes was at 10CNY, while the entrance fee was 60CNY. They had us choose which vehicle we want to ride. Our tour group opted to ride the monster truck. Apart from the occasional lug because it was a challenge driving it up the sand hills, it was a pretty bumpy but awesome ride. The desert was so quiet apart from the monster truck's noise, our group's collective "ooohs and aaaah", and occasional screams when the truck had to go on huge drops. It was like riding a rollercoaster only slower. 
Apple and I promised that we won't miss out on riding the camels. Well, it was pretty stinky and scary trying to hold on to the camel's hump (ewww). I had a hard time balancing myself and concentrating on holding on everytime the camel had to trudge up/down sand hills. So I wasn't able to take pictures while on top of the camel. Boohoo. Our trip back astride the beast was a nightmare because the track near the camp was littered with camel poo and there were little insects hanging on to our caps. It was torture because I couldn't swipe at them because my hands were stinky.
The highlight of our trip to the desert was the sand slide. For only 15CNY, you get to sit on a make shift sand board and get pushed from a scary height. You get to choose whether you want to go down fast or slow. I muttered some profanity and went for the fast slide. I didn't fall down and rolled over but I sure tasted some crunchy sand. Yummy.
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